Of Godzilla Governments: How Borrowing and Spending (Stealing) Flushed Us Down the Toilet

August 11, 2013

You hear it everywhere.Barbershops, workout
gyms, radio, TV, and of course the Internet.The buzz is constant and varied about the financial corner we, the
world, have painted ourselves into. All
nations find themselves in deep debt doo doo. In the past few years many trillions
of dollars and Euros have been borrowed and spent by nations all over the world
a la Wimpy of famed Popeye Comics. Remember Wimpy?He’s the dude who asks everyone he sees, “I
would gladly pay you back on Wednesday (a future date) if you would lend me a
quarter for a hamburger today.”Wimpy
loved hamburgers.But he was always
broke.To eat, Wimpy had to borrow.But he got by somehow.So has Greece.So has France, England, Portugal, Italy,
Mexico, and you guessed it, good old Uncle Sam.He is the biggest debtor in the world.Compared to all nations in the world taken together.

Major sovereign governments such as
Greece have thrown in the towel. Paying
off the Grecian Debt is harder than slaying Medusa before her eyes turn you to
stone. The better-managed countries in
the European Alliance, take Germany for instance, resent Greece’s going
broke. Gives the more financially
responsible countries a bad name. But Germany
figures that the stronger financial countries in the European Union with Euros
as the common currency must bail out the weak sisters like Greece or see the
walls crumble and come falling down on the heads of every country in the EU. It is a no-win deal of mammoth proportions. Every country loses.

“So what about the United States?” one is tempted to ask. We have mortgaged our asses, our souls, and
our children. Our National Debt is
upwards of $16 trillion dollars! The
trouble with that exercise is that even though the Fed continues to print new
money (which fuels terminal inflation) the rest of the world (in a nutshell) is
much, much broker than us. So foreign
sovereign nations still want to trade with the United States, can you believe
it? In US dollars, no less. America, in a purely dysfunctional sense, is
seen as an icon of world financial strength, despite the fact that the United
States is so broke, that paying back even a small portion of the Massive
National Debt is akin to holding back a Mississippi 100-year flood. Here is a look at our National Debt Clock in
real time:

So how did the world in the 21st century get so inundated with
debt and dead-end roads to solving world debt?
Is living within our means really that dreadful? Just who are these hucksters we have elected
to Congress for the last few decades?
You know, the ones who have caused the government they were in control
of at the time to borrow and spend us into oblivion in the name of God so we
could defeat Evil Empires and Axes of Evil?
But first, before pondering that let us take a look at the national
debts of some key countries around the world.

Great Zeus! How the f did these
countries get access to such money to borrow and spend themselves into a
terminal catnip trance of stupidity gone wild?
I have to believe that the leaders, both elected and self-declared
believed that to stay in power and secure the approval of the people it
behooved them to borrow out the ass and not ever worry about the math or paying
the debt (plus all the bloody interest) back.
Free money in a country whether justified to defeat imagined evil or
not, if it rained upon the people, rest assured that you would get the votes to
get reelected next election. That is so
crass. So mercenary and cynical. But sadly true. We took our eye off the ball and acquiesced
to lies and scams perpetrated by our own government. Like, when al Qaeda attacked us on 911 you
attack Iraq. Doesn’t have to make sense
that Saddam and bin Laden were never in cahoots. No matter.
Just spin it, the American people will buy it. Get Colin Powell to speak before the UN and
back up his claims with artists’ drawings of WMD sites! They also know that the chumps (us) will still
get to fund the lies with our tax dollars.
And the perps get to skate free unscathed and write books and get
presidential libraries built. As long as
they don’t visit countries with war criminal extradition policies.

Even Nicolo Machiavelli in his brilliant book The Prince gave
remedies for most every twist and turn a head of state could expect to
encounter. It told you how to keep your
kingdom and your rule over the people so that you need not fear losing your
kingdom or your head. But nowhere in the
book can I remember it suggesting the intoxicating ambrosia of borrowing money to
spend on the people to give them the sense of belonging to a rich government as
equals. Back then you just could not
borrow the money because the piper came knocking on the door promptly to be
paid. And the jig was up. But these days, sovereign nations can borrow,
borrow, borrow money and keep on stacking it up, debt on debt, interest on
interest without fear of an uprising.
Why not? Well, you channel off
the money to your own pocket, your partners in crime (can anybody say Military
Industrial Complex?), and everybody is happy as long as the balloon is up and
not deflated or punctured. Borrowed
money and wrongfully created money (printing more to pay it back with cheaper
inflated dollars) seems like a crime against humanity. Yet Bernanke gets away with it. Obama don’t mind one bit, but he don’t talk
about it much. George W. Bush allowed it
for 8 damned years so he would have the $4 trillion extra to finance his Afghanistan
War and then his Iraq War. Lovely. All them no-bid crony “Have More” contractors
probably had orgasms every day that went by when they could sell hammers to
Uncle Sam for $500 apiece with no hassle or flak from the American voters. Tack on more trillions to the already
staggering National Debt, and to a Martian observing earthlings, he would have
to say that Americans went completely bonkers!
Coo Coo for Ko Ko Puffs! With no
hope of regaining sanity. It’s more than
sad. It’s prophetic.

What’s worse is nobody took note of the arithmetic. Nobody cared.
It was lame and boring to consider when we had been attacked by Muslim
terrorists. We needed to draw blood even
ifen it cost us a trillion dollars a day and we had to auction off Yosemite
Park to the Japanese and Oregon and Washington to the Chinese. They are the biggest creditors to our
National Debt, you know. They deserve a
National Park or two for saving our bacon and keeping National Debt Clock
running fast, don’t they? I mean we
still get our Social Security checks and other gummint services, right?

On July 24th the House just voted by a slim margin to continue to fund the
massive dollar drain on the National Budget, the NSA. It is the large agency that spies on us all
in its search for terrorists. But it
also keeps us safer by monitoring the activities of terrorists and nipping
bombings and other terrorist strikes against the US in the bud, right? Tell that to the Boston Marathon spectators
who were killed and maimed. Congratulations
NSA. I guess our tax dollars are well
spent. But on what?

Admittedly, there is better reason and awareness of our massive borrowing
and spending as seen in the protests of further massive government funding of
the NSA collecting phone records to spy not just on terrorists, but millions of
American citizens. The slim margin of
the House vote reflects this. But that
seems like too little, too late. The House
vote to continue funding the NSA as a part of the Defense budget did, after all,
pass. The fact that those opposed to a
continued funding of the NSA in order for our own government to continue to spy
on us without cause, is, do I have to say it?
Ludicrous. Dumb. Insane.
Will the tide turn and Americans wake the hell up and rise up in protest
of more billions poured into a newly-formed government spigot such as the NSA
to allow needless monies to flow into spy contractors and their own ego
agencies? So they can spy on innocent
Americans (without FISA Court approval) just to fill the pockets of those who
do not hate freedom, but would exploit and bludgeon the lives of innocents who
trusted their government to do the right thing with their tax dollars? You know, those whose campaign contributions
for favors talk the loudest? Poor
America. Poor oblivious suckers who
trusted their leaders in good faith. Poor
us.

The world no longer seems to be a safe place to me. Truth can be bought by Big Brother and all
his political consultants and media wizards who can cut and paste and edit the
truth ad infinitum. These entities can
change minds to be certain. Words and
pictures and silky tongues, ads set to the right music can reset the collective
unconscious of the world itself. The human animal has not yet evolved to be
able to detect those ruses that rewrite the truth and make morphed history seem
real. Truth does not matter, nor does it appear that it ever did. Countries and governments have lost all
rational competence to lead the 7 billion inhabitants of planet earth. So why the rant? Why the rave?
DK. I thought the people of the
earth sought truth, I guess, silly me. Thought they wanted a good job and to be
free to think their own thoughts without persecution or being killed. A fair shake.
Education for their kids. An
environment where they could earn a decent wage and pursue happiness. I am saddened that we have gone to the dogs
in a dog-eat-dog world where might is right, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely as it always did. We may
chuckle at the wit of Lord Acton who coined the quote about absolute power, but
we failed to heed his warning. And now
we have become absolute idiots. Absolutely. We no longer have the right of habeas
corpus. Freedom of movement without cameras
and drones monitoring us. We are sent
away to be tortured without a phone call.
Our personal business that used to be sacred and against the law to copy
or violate has become a memory. Looks
like the boys from the back room ain’t scared anymore to even make it look good
when they blow up our liberties. No more
trial by a jury of our peers. Or the
caring of our peers, our neighbors.

How could I ever rule out our descending into a world of doublespeak and
oblivion when rational thought waited in the wings to save us? Rational thought was bought off. Truth was rewritten by the Ministry of
History where Winston worked. Money and
Power are truth. Money defines truth. The answer is that I did not think that money
could buy everything, including the rewriting of reality with even a few
billion dollars of propaganda money that countries spend freely to keep the
balloon afloat and the money flowing into government centers, e.g., Washington,
D. C. We have become herds of bovine
creatures. And DC has the stick to guide
us down the narrow trail to basic necessities.
Until it is slaughter time.